Contact: Emily Zender, Thomas More Society, 312-782-1680, ezender@thomasmoresociety.org

ST. LOUIS, Mo., April 5, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, citing the failure of the defendant, Missouri Director of Insurance, John M. Huff, to appeal last month's federal ruling striking down as unconstitutional Section 376.1199, R.S. Mo., which required Missouri insurers to honor requests by enrollees and employers to elect out of contraceptive coverage, Thomas More Society's retained counsel, Timothy Belz, Esq. of the St. Louis law firm of Ottsen, Leggat and Belz, L.C., filed on behalf of Our Lady's Inn -- a Missouri non-profit corporation that provides housing, counseling, nursing care and various other services to women in pregnancy crises -- a Second Motion to Intervene in the lawsuit, Missouri Insurance Coalition v. John M. Huff, No. 4:12-cv-02354-AGF, "for the purposes of appeal[ing]" said ruling.

The motion recounts how the plaintiffs, a coalition of Missouri insurance companies, sued to bar the enforcement of Section 376.1199, arguing that they could not comply with it as well as with the Obamacare requirement that certain health plans provide coverage for FDA-approved contraceptives and related counseling ("the Mandate"). But, Belz contends, there are many entitites that are exempt from compliance with either the Mandate alone or with Obamacare in total, for example, under "grandfathering" or other exemptions such as the "temporary safe harbor," not to mention employers exempt by virtue of their First Amendment rights to religious liberty and/or their statutory rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Nevertheless, last March 14, 2013, the federal court in St. Louis ruled in favor of the insurance companies and held Section 376.1199 void as unconstitutional, thereby denying Our Lady's Inn, as well as similarly situated Missouri citizens, the right to request -- and to have their request honored -- that their insurance policies exclude morally offensive coverage of contraceptives, including drugs commonly known as the "morning after pill" and "week after pill" which are deemed abortifacients.

"While employers across the country are pressing, and often winning, lawsuits over the legality of the federal Obamacare Mandate, nevertheless in Missouri, regardless whether your company may be held exempt from the Mandate, you will still be forced to have a contraceptives-inclusive insurance plan," said Peter Breen, executive director and legal counsel for the Thomas More Society. "Missouri insurance companies are enforcing the federal HHS Birth Control Mandate even more widely and forcefully than the federal government itself is enforcing it. Churches and temporarily exempt non-profits are finding it impossible to secure contraceptive free insurance plans," as insurance companies are refusing to provide such plans.

The renewed motion seeks leave to intervene by right as well as permissively, contending that Our Lady's Inn's new request is timely, as it just learned of the Insurance Director's unwillingness to appeal the court's ruling; that it has a legally protected interest relating to the subject of the lawsuit; that absent Our Lady's Inn's intervention its ability to protect its interests may be impaired; and that while the court denied its earlier request to intervene, saying it was "not persuaded that the interest of Our Lady's Inn will not be adequately protected by the current parties," the Director not only lost the case but now "there is no reason to believe there will be an appeal."

Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of Thomas More Society, said, "Our Society has been pleased to step forward to underwrite the defense of this litigation and to retain Tim Belz, an eminent Missouri litigator with whom I was co-counsel in defense of another major federal case, NOW v. Scheidler, for many years over two decades ago. This important Missouri law, a vital bulwark protecting citizens' fundamental rights of religious liberty, deserves a strong bipartisan defense, which Our Lady's Inn and Tim Belz will provide." Here, it is clear that the current defendant, Director of Insurance John M. Huff, does not adequately represent the vital rights at stake because he has "not yet appealed the court's decision and has indicated that he may not appeal at all or may appeal only limited aspects of the decision." Yet, the interests of Our Lady's Inn and those of others similarly situated would be wholly unrepresented without a comprehensive appeal.

A copy of the Second Motion to Intervene of Our Lady's Inn may be found here. Our Lady's Motion for Expedited Hearing may be found here. And Our Lady's Suggestions in Support of Second Motion to Intervene may be found here.

About the Thomas More Society
Thomas More Society is a national not-for-profit law firm that exists to restore respect in law for life, marriage, and religious liberty. Headquartered in Chicago, the Society fosters support for these causes by providing high quality pro-bono professional legal services from local trial courts all the way to the United States Supreme Court. www.thomasmoresociety.org